Life goes on
by Ginn
Summary: Harry returns to the Dursley's after his hectic fifth year and finds a surprise about his aunt waiting for him. !!SPOILERS FOR THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX!!


Disclaimer - Harry Potter belongs to the wonderful J. K. Rowling, Scholastic Books, Warner Bros., and a whole bunch of other people.  I own nothing, except the plot line, and any new characters I introduce, if they're based on someone I'll let you know.

WARNING SPOILERS

This story contains SPOILERS for the new FIFTH BOOK if you haven't read it I would suggest that you not read this, 

however that is, after all, up to you.  

Chapter One

Confusion at the Dursley's

          BANG, BANG.  Harry was woken abruptly by loud noises coming from downstairs.  He rolled over in his bed to look at the illuminated numbers on his alarm clock.  8:15, hang on a tick, Harry thought, why didn't Aunt Petunia wake me at five?  Harry quickly got up, dressed, and went downstairs so he could find out what had gone wrong that he hadn't been woken to make breakfast, for the Dursleys.  

          "Good morning Harry," said Petunia as he walked into the kitchen, "Did you sleep well?"

          Harry immediately forgot about the loud noises and looked at his aunt in utter confusion; he just couldn't understand why she was being so nice.  Then a thought struck him, what if they had thought of a way to get rid of him forever, but, no that couldn't be if they had surly there would be swarms of owls in their kitchen with howlers for his aunt, like last summer.  

          "Well, how did you sleep?" repeated Petunia, her sweet attitude wavering with annoyance.  

          Harry realized that he must have been silent for a few moments while he had been thinking.  

          "Er…um…well…good?" said Harry unsurely, still sure he was about to have some kind of horrible accident.  

          "Well that's nice dear, tea?" asked Petunia brandishing a full cup of tea, in the good china.  

          "Er, well okay." Harry still had no idea why Aunt Petunia was being so nice to him then, something else occurred to him.  

          "Aunt Petunia, where are Uncle Vernon and Dudley?"

          "Oh!" Petunia's mouth formed a small o of surprise as if she hadn't expected to be asked that question, "Well for your information Vernon has taken Dudley and some of his little friends camping, they left early this morning.  They'll be back at the end of next week.  Until then we will be alone in this house and while I was never that fond of my sister, or of you for that matter, I will not allow you to leave this house." Harry looked back at his aunt even more confused than before, "Well don't look at me like you've just swallowed a goldfish.  You are family and while Vernon is not here breathing down my neck I can't see why I shouldn't be at least a little nice to you, but I am still required to protect you, so you will not leave this house.  Understand?"

          "Yes," Replied Harry, not really understanding anything.  

          "Good.  Well then I'm going out to tend to the garden, they've not put water restrictions on us yet even though we've had another drought this year."  Petunia turned away from Harry and went toward the backdoor.  

          Harry turned away from his aunt and took a sip of his tea, he remembered the last time that he'd been offered tea by an adult, he hadn't drank it then, he'd poured it into a vase of dried flowers untouched.  He remembered fondly the look of frustration on Umbridge's face when the veritas serum that was in the tea had no effect on him and he didn't tell her where Sirius was hiding.  Sirius, Harry missed his Godfather he still felt as if he had lost the only family he had left.  

          As Harry trudged upstairs toward his room absent mindedly sipping on his tea his mind once again revisited the Death Chamber, in the Department of Mysteries.  He saw Sirius fighting with his cousin Bellatrix, and he saw Bellatrix stupefy Sirius and saw him fall through those whispering curtains, felt Lupin's arms holding him back, keeping him from going after Sirius.  But these days these images were not only accompanied by sorrow and pain but by anger.  Oh yes he knew what she had meant now, he felt as if he could want it, even enjoy watching her writhe under his wand.  He wanted it now, and he knew he could do it to Bellatrix, if he ever saw her again, after all, next time it wouldn't be the first time that he'd preformed an unforgivable curse.  

          Harry threw himself onto his bed and looked at his desk, there sat his half full cup of tea, he wondered when he'd put it down, but next to the tea propped up against the wall was a mirror, a small mirror, to the back of which a note was attached.  Harry had memorized that note and began to think it over in his head;

_                                                  This is a two-way mirror.  I've got the other._

_                                                  If you need to speak to me, just say my name_

_                                                  into it; you'll appear in my mirror and I'll be_

_                                                  able to talk in yours.  James and I used to use_

_                                                  them when we were in separate detentions._

          When I had first found that I had the mirror Sirius was already dead and I had thought that I could talk to him even though he was dead, but that hadn't worked, Sirius mustn't have had the mirror with him when he had died.  With that thought Harry rolled over on his bed and began to cry into his pillow.  

          Harry rolled over and looked at his clock again, 11:26; he must have fallen asleep after he had stopped crying.  Just then Harry's stomach let out a loud grumble.  He decided to go downstairs to see if he could get some lunch.  

          The downstairs of the house was completely deserted except for the sound of his aunt's humming floating through the window.  Harry opened the refrigerator to look for something that would make a suitable lunch for him and his aunt.  

          The contents of the refrigerator were minimal; there was an old bag of potatoes, some of which were starting to sprout, two heads of lettuce, an almost empty carton of milk, half full bags of carrots, string beans, apples, and brussel sprouts, and there was a dish of butter.  Not knowing what to do with such small amounts of food Harry closed the refrigerator and turned to the cabinets.  In the first cabinet Harry found a box of macaroni and cheese.  Macaroni and cheese would do quite nicely, Harry thought, it wouldn't make Petunia angry that he had used too much unneeded food.  So Harry set about boiling the water for the macaroni, and preparing the pre-packaged cheese.  It took about ten minutes to prepare the macaroni so that it could be mixed with the cheese.  While Harry was mixing the macaroni and cheese his mind drifted back to Sirius, and what had happened at the end of the school year.  What if he had remembered that mirror earlier, Fred and George wouldn't have left the way that they did, and Kreacher wouldn't have been able to lie to him because he would have been talking to Sirius instead of that blasted house elf.  But Harry couldn't dwell on that right now first he had to deal with his aunt, who had just walked through the back door, slightly pink and very cheerful looking.  

          "Well hello again Harry, how was your morning?" Petunia asked cheerfully.  

          "It sucked." Replied Harry flatly.

          "Well come on it can't have been that bad.  It's not as if anybody has died."

          Harry glared at her for her mistake.

          "Well that's what you know.  Maybe somebody has died," shouted Harry.

          Petunia looked taken aback at Harry's yelling, as well as the thought that somebody had died.  

          "Well have some macaroni," Harry said as her glared at her and brandished a bowl of the macaroni that he had just made, at her.  

          "Thank you," said Petunia now sounding frightened but more resigned to Harry's attitude.  Following his lead petunia sat down at the kitchen table.  

          "Harry I think that we need to have a talk."

          "About what?"

          "About, well, you," Petunia was looking directly at him from across the table.

          "Well, what about me?  That my parents are dead along with my godfather.  Or that you and uncle Vernon are the ones who are keeping me alive.  Or that Vernon doesn't know why you want me to stay here?  So, which will it be?" Harry looked at his aunt triumphantly, as if he'd won something.  

          "None of those I'm afraid.  What I must say will not start with you but with me.  When your mother and I were young I was the elder, I was always the leader and she always looked to me for advice.  When she got her letter to Hogwarts," here Harry made a chocking noise on his macaroni, "oh come off it it's just a school name, it's Vernon who has such a problem with it.  Now where was I, oh yes, when she got her letter to Hogwarts my parents were ecstatic.  I was the only one who wasn't happy, not because I saw her as a freak but because she was my little sister and I wasn't going to get a letter.  I thought that her getting a letter and my not getting one made her better than me; she never thought that, she still thought of me as just her big sister.

          "And then she married another wizard, and I knew that you'd be just like them.  I knew that you had something that I could never dream of having and I envied you for it, just as I'd envied Lily.  When Dumbledore sent you here I was afraid that Dudley would have the same inferiority complex that I had had when I was young, so I kept you down.  I kept you from being better than Dudley always hoping that maybe your letter from Hogwarts would never come, but it did.  Now I just go along with Vernon, I don't really hate you, but Vernon and Dudley do.  As long as they're gone we can be friends, but as soon as they come back I have to go back to being the me that you have always known."

          This surprising revelation by aunt Petunia was quite unexpected to Harry and he just didn't know what to say to this.  So he said nothing.  

          Petunia obviously realizing that Harry was not going to say anything to her about what she had just said so she just went back to eating her macaroni and cheese.  When she had finished she rinsed her bowl, put it in the dishwasher, and left the room, not saying where she was going.  

A.N. – I know this chapter is pretty gloomy but it will get better, eventually.  All right, the letter on the back of the mirror is straight out of The Order of the Phoenix and the sentence after that is a compilation of ideas from the seven ¶'s after the letter on page 858 in the book.  Of course there are references to the 5th book throughout this chapter.  As there will be in probably every chapter after this as well.  I'm quite sorry about this but installments may come slowly as my muse is a very fickle girl and I don't have internet access at home, the library doesn't like me very much.  

**I Await your Flaming Tomatoes**


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